Entry Four: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 5:45 pm

My feet dangle, swinging backward and forward until my heels bump into the solid trunk beneath me. I look down at the one, two, three steps it takes to reach this spot. I must have taken those three steps though they are a blur in my memory even now as I sit once again on the stump of the tallest severed limb. Right where Kole would’ve wanted to be. The key is not to allow myself the chance to think, to consider the consequences. I know this adrenaline is the reason why I did not freeze up this attempt. Because only now, after being seated for a minute or so, I begin to feel the bark-carved scrapes in my palms. The soft flesh is red, especially in the meatier spots, but it is not raw. I wring my hands, trying to rub away the stinging and cold. It will be worth it to watch the sunset from up here, I tell myself.

From where we live, up on the top of the hill, we get some truly magical sunsets. The kind where your breath literally catches, where the sky practically ignites. I wonder how many of those type of sunsets my tree watched in its lifetime. I straighten – make myself an extension of the tree, become the severed limb upon which I am seated: my eye level twelve feet about the ground. Silver Maples are known for how quickly they grow and reach maturity: often over 100 feet, sometimes up to 140. The upper branches draw my gaze, begging me to guess their height. Forty feet? I wonder, estimating that it doubles the height on my house. Fifty? My heart squeezes.

Just a baby.

I lean my head onto the trunk beside me. A cold, wetness dampens my face. I pull away to find a dark, oval-shaped splotch in the bark just below the chainsaw mark. My first thought is tears; logic intervened with the answer: snow melt. I run three fingers over the spot of dark bark and then rub fingers and thumb together. The consistency is not water, but almost like trumpet valve oil. Sap? I wonder to myself. But tears still feels like the truer answer.

I swallow and turn back to the horizon in order to see what this limb would if it were here. I expect the fiery oranges, burnt reds, and golden yellows, but instead I see pastels: a pale blue, painted with a swatch of pink. The sky could be a pre-packaged bag of dollar store cotton candy. My shoulders slump. I sit and wait and wait and wait, hoping for a prettier sunset. Even as the voice in my mind utters those words, I know how ridiculous the word “prettier” sounds, how unfair it is to ask for more from the world than for it to continue spinning, for the sun to sink down as elegantly or as plainly as it wishes with the hope that it will rise and do it all again tomorrow.

As I wait for this not-destined-to-be prettier sunset, I begin to feel an ache in my hips. I realize that for almost half an hour, I have been sitting on this stump severed at a severe diagonal. My hips have come to settle at a 30 degree angle: left hip stretched low, right compressed into my lower rib. I wiggle forward, struck by the dull, numb sensation in my lower extremities. Once freed, I rotate myself around, grip the bark with still-stinging palms, and slowly return myself back to the heart of the tree. The muscles in my stomach tremble and ache but rather than weakness, I sense the promise of strength.

Entry Three: Sunday, February 8, 2015 9:15

Hands braced against the Y of the limbs and quads prepped to flex and hoist my body into the tree, I pause. I allow myself to relax and instead melt forward, bending at the hips, until my shoulders are wedged tight between the branches. I stare into the palm of a four fingered hand. My left bicep rests against the sole intact limb; right against the tallest stump where I once stood. My normal seat, sheared shortest lies next and then the final severed finger as I continue counterclockwise. Despite having three mangled digits, the palm still cradles its cargo.

I wiggle left and right and left again to compress myself further towards this unexplored area: the crevice where I usually only plant my foot and continue climbing upwards. The shallowest part of this bowl holds dregs of tree tea. Blanched shards of pulpy wood look like the abandoned remnants of a kindergartener’s cereal. Awkwardly I maneuver my hand to reach and pick up a slender shard of bark. One side is a rough, dull gray. From the cross section I can see it is millimeters thick, a fraction of the remaining width which is a raw cherry color. I try to pin the bark back to a naked patch of tree. When I release, the bark tumbles back into the basin with a littering of leaves. Colors vary from ivory to gray, browns to almost-reds. Stringy stems jut out of the hash. Pulling one only strips it of its papery skin. I claw into the half frozen mound and try to release a whole leaf for observation, but again and again, the leaves only tear.

Below the stump-seat however – the deepest section of the basin – a pond has formed, a glistening frozen surface encapsulating what lies beneath. I see specks of dirt, bits of bark, twigs, and an almost whole, pristinely preserved leaf. I reach forward, straining against the clutch of the limbs on my shoulders to run a finger along the lake. A layer of cold sweat has formed over top. I press down, watch my nail turn deep pink, knuckle bleach white, the water below the surface flex. Still the ice refuses to crack. I examine the object behind the ice-glass. The flesh of the leaf is an orange-tan, almost flesh tone. Dark spots freckle the surface. Veins branch their way from the woody stem to its body with five jagged edges. I pause. Five. Jagged. Edges. I withdraw slightly. Blink once, twice. My heart sputters. Then detonates.

I clamber at the natural litter of the tree’s internal basin, scratching my shoulders and uppers arms on bark. I step back, drop to the ground, the stones cutting into my knees. I claw through the debris, searching for sign of a compound leaf with opposite branching. But all I find around are simple leaves, double serrated edges. Even as they disintegrate in my hands I know.

Not Ash.

My stomach turns. Who told me it was an Ash tree? I close my eyes as faces flash through my mind: the realtor, the inspector, the neighbor, only me? They fade. I can’t remember. How could I have been so stupid to think my tree was something different, unique, special? Like an Ash. When it is a simple, plain, common Silver Maple.

My lower back creaks as I stand. My exposed fingers sting so I retract them inside my sleeves. Wind blows through the fabric of my sweatshirt and forces the hair on my arms to stand. I swallow hard, staring through the blur of burning, salty water at the broken tree, reflecting on the past six weeks. While this tree- this common Silver Maple tree- held me as I held the memory of an irreplaceable boy. I lean my forehead against the gravelly trunk.

If you were a Ceiba, you could not mean more to me.